View synonyms for stifled

stifled

[ stahy-fuhld ]

Phonetic (Standard)IPA

adjective

quelled, crushed, or ended by force:
The activist has been in and out of detention as she continues to call attention to her country's stifled uprising.
suppressed, repressed, or inhibited:
My foot slipped, and with a stifled shriek I found myself grasping desperately for a handhold.
One version of me grew up as expected, appearing as a confident adult to the outside world; the other remained a stifled, insecure child.
deprived of air or of the ability to breathe:
The light is mixed with the dust floating in the stifled hut, where the air inside never moves.
When I see that picture of the stifled refugees hidden in the van, I don’t understand the heartlessness that permits such a thing.

Origin of stifled¹

One gets the sense that these are the words Sotomayor stifled, or perhaps drafted and circulated, in Fisher.

Lukashenko, shaped by the colonial experience, stifled their project in infancy.

Stifled by fear, our leaders lose perspective and cease being authentic and vulnerable.

And did they bequeath to the military the task of rescuing the democratic impulse stifled by a pharaoh with an Islamist face?

Did you feel like when you were acting as the first lady of France, it stifled you artistically?

But its voice was soon stifled, and its children were rewarded for their abnegation by punishment, martyrdom and death.

It seemed a long time, but the watchers knew that something was going to happen and stifled their impatience.

She wrung her slender hands together, as if in pain, then they fell apart, and a stifled cry came from her lips.

This emotion of joy coming suddenly in the midst of his fury melted him into a sobbing torrent of tears, and stifled words.

From the groans and stifled cries it was too plain they left dead and dying in their course.

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